Research paper on the changes in content of television shows over the past 10-20 years

Research paper on the changes in content of television shows over the past 10-20 years

Introduction

Television has been an important part of our daily lives for many years, it has affected how people think and behave in short it affects our daily lives in a number of subconscious ways; the goal of this paper is to assess the impact of changing television content on children. In particular the role on violence will be analyzed and how children are affected by such depiction on television. In a year alone a child will spend a total of 1500 hours in front of the television which is an extremely significant amount of time in comparison to the 900 hours they spend in school (Herr, 2007). Recent trends have changed the nature of programs being broadcast. Violence is presently a major dominating element found in many programs. Ever since the prevalence of violence has increased in television content it has been a controversial topic since many years. Many studies conducted in the past have focused on determining the role of violence on television and the development of aggression and anger amongst children; however the content of television continues to show violence, if the impact of such programs is damaging the children it needs to be understood in order to be able to determine how the children respond to such programs.

Considering the rapid increase in extremely violent television programs within the last few years, the researcher has deemed it worthy to investigate in greater detail the impact of violence on television and the development of aggression in children. For that purpose a number of research papers will be analyzed and assessed. Based on the literature assessed, hypothesis will be generated.

Definition of Terms

Violence

According to the American Psychology Association (2012) violence can be defined as an extreme form of aggression. There have been a number of identified causes of violence which include exposure to violent media, frustration, and lack of guidance, violence in neighborhood or schools. In many situations it has been stated that the increase in violence in media can result in increase in aggression, increase in alcohol and drug consumption.

Aggression

Aggression is often used interchangeably with violence; however there is a difference between both terms. Usually violence leads to aggression which can be understood as the habit or practice of launching assaults, destructive behavior, and hostility towards others.

Rationale of this study

A great number of people believe that ever since technology has increased, so has the number of hours children spend in front of the television; this statement is unfortunately not accurate. As stated by the AACDP (2011) even to this day American children tend to watch at least 4 hours of television on a daily basis. Television program ratings have shown an increase in viewership of programs which are violent and instead of changing this trend the entertainment industry continues to promote some sort of violence in their television ...